Clearwater of Cascadia

This facility received a quality overall grade as described above, but we especially wanted to point out its nearly flawless government inspections in recent years. We awarded it an A in this category. Our inspection ratings are based on several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Sadly, this nursing home was assessed a category L deficiency, which is unexpected based on its inspection score. This category indicates the government inspectors uncovered a widespread deficiency putting resident safety or health in immediate jeopardy. In spite of this major red flag, other aspects of this facility's inspection report gave us some hope.

This facility received high grades in the area of nursing as well. In fact, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. Nursing scores are primarily tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home is also above average in the area of long-term care, where it was awarded a score of B. It performed better than most nursing homes in this area. Facilities that receive this type of score in this category typically provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure residents are kept in good health. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is far higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The next category we rated was short-term care, in which this facility was given a grade of B-. This ended up being this facility's worst area. This is nevertheless not a bad grade. In determining our short-term care grades, we look at a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This grade is often a fair assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we considered in this category is the percentage of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.1 percent of this facility's residents returned home.